Saturday, June 18, 2016

Nizami: Mara Ba Ghamza Kusht

Nizami Ganjavi (Persian: نظامی گنجوی, Nezāmi Ganjavi‎‎), 1141-1209, is considered the greatest romantic epic poet of Persian literature. He forged a colloquial, realistic style of writing, and his heritage is shared today across Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kurdistan and Tajikistan. Nizami was born in Ganja (an outpost of the Seljuq empire, in present-day Azerbaijan, named from the Turkic 'Gan chai,' refering to the eponymous 'Wide river',) and is believed to have spent his whole life in the South Caucasus.

By the end of the 10th century, Persian literature had become widespread from the Mediterranean to the Punjab. The Seljuqs took Ganja from the Shaddadids in 1075, and adopted Persian for their courts. By the middle of the 12th century, the Seljuqs' control of the region had weakened; their provincial governors, usually local Persian nobles, further encouraged Persianization. Political power was diffused; Farsi remained the primary language of court and commerce. This was especially true in Ganja: Nizami was patronized by different rulers, and dedicated his epics to various rival dynasties including the Seljuqs, Eldiguzids, Shirvanshahs, the ruler of Ahar and Ahmadilis. Although he rubbed shoulders with rulers and princes, Nizami avoided the court life and is generally believed to have lived in seclusion with his 'most beloved wife', a Qipchaq slave girl of the Eurasian steppe named Afaq ('Horizon'.) It is after Afaq that Shirin ('Sugar') of Nizami's epic Khusrau and Shirin is modeled.

Often referred to by the honorifics Hakim ('Sage') or Rind ('Knowledgable'), Nizami is both a learned poet and master of a lyrical, sensuous, secular style. Poets of the time were expected to be well versed, Nizami was exceptionally so. His poems show not only that he was fully acquainted with Arabic and Persian literatures, as well as with popular traditions, but also that he was familiar with diverse fields such as mathematics, astronomy, astrology, alchemy, medicine, botany, Quranic exegesis, Islamic theory and law, Iranian myths and legends, history, ethics, philosophy, esoterica, painting, and music. His strong character, social sensibility, and knowledge of oral and written historical records, as well as his rich Persian cultural heritage - all serve to unite pre-Islamic and Islamic Iran into the creation of a new standard of literary achievement; one that not only creates a bridge between pre-Islamic and Islamic Iran, but also straddles Iran and the whole ancient world.

I went to the Tavern last night, but I was not admitted
I was bellowing at the door, yet nobody was listening to me
Either none of the wine-sellers were awake
Or I was a nobody, and no one opens the door for a nobody
When more or less half of the night had passed
A knowing man raised his head from a booth and showed his face
I asked of him: "Open the door"; he told me: "Go, talk not like a fool
At this hour, nobody opens the door for anybody
This is not a mosque where doors are open any moment
Where you can come late and push ahead to the first row
This is the Tavern of Magians and Rinds dwell here
There are Beauties, candles, wine, sugar, reed flutes and songs
Whatever wonders that exist, are present here
Muslims, Armenians, Zoroastrian, Nestorians, and Jews
If you are seeking company of all that is found here
You must become a dust upon the feet of everyone."
O Nizami! if you knock on this door day and night
You won't find but smoke from a burning fire.

Goethe described Nizami thus:

A gentle, highly gifted spirit, who, when Firdausi had completed the collected heroic traditions, chose for the material of his poems the sweetest encounters of the deepest love. Majnun and Layli, Khosrow and Shirin, lovers he presented; meant for one another by premonition, destiny, nature, habit, inclination, passion staunchly devoted to each other; but divided by mad ideas, stubbornness, chance, necessity, and force, then miraculously reunited, yet in the end again in one way or another torn apart and separated from each other.

Amir Khusrau's lament after reading Nizami:

Ruler of the kingdom of phrases; scholar and poet, his goblet raises

In it pure wine, intoxicatingly sweet; in goblet beside me settles only peat.
Below, K.L. Saigal renders a composition attributible to Nizami, though there is some debate on whether certain of the couplets were added later, such as by Mirza Hasan Qateel Dehlvi (Qateel "Lahori" to the Persians.)